- Retail & Consumer Goods
Accelerating analytics for rapid decision-making in retail
Overview
Overcoming slow query runtimes to unlock valuable insights in retail analytics
Data analytics can be a major boon for any organization. But when critical workflows and processes slow to a crawl, it’s difficult for stakeholders to extract valuable insights that guide strategic decision-making.
That was the case for one of our clients, a movie and game retailer, as its Strategy and Analytics team frequently encountered query runtimes that stretched on for hours and sometimes even days at a time. Turnaround times on new analyses were significantly delayed as a result, preventing the organization from realizing the full value of big data analytics.
Our Solution
Constructing a fast and responsive data warehouse
OneSix sat down with our client’s key stakeholders to identify their most pressing pain points as well as the underlying causes. Our expert team determined that Amazon Redshift could support the business’s data warehouse and analytics needs, transitioning away from its existing on-premise SQL Server environment. We gathered requirements for content and structural changes to those sources in their new environment before loading data into the new solution.
Our team also converted the client’s existing Tableau workbooks so they would be compatible with the Amazon Redshift Data Warehouse solution. In some cases, these workbooks were rebuilt from the ground up and tested using Tableau. This new arrangement takes advantage of Amazon Redshift’s superior processing power to aggregate queries as quickly as possible.
As a result, the rebuilt Tableau workbooks displayed performance improvements that were orders of magnitude above their SQL Server-based predecessors. Tens of billions of records are now available for Strategy and Analytics teams to quickly run queries against.
Technologies Implemented
- SQL Server, the existing on-premises data warehouse, was leveraged as a data source for Amazon Redshift.
- Amazon Redshift operated as a ultra-fast “data-mart” solution for this client, returning high data volume queries within seconds.
- Tableau Server and Tableau Desktop were utilized to process terabytes of data in seconds to analyze sales and inventory KPIs for.
Results
Empowering rapid decision-making with fast data queries and insights
Thanks to OneSix’s expert assistance, our client finally has a data warehouse solution that can support its high-volume data sources and deliver true business value. No longer is our client running a query and coming back after their lunch hour to see the results.
Ready to unlock the full potential of data and AI?
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